While coronavirus concern exploded demand for disposable plastic forks, spoons, knives and packaged products, plastic industrialists exporting $ 5 billion asked the government to include the industry in strategic investments.
According to the sector report of the Turkish Plastic Industrialists Research, Development and Education Foundation (PAGEV), which also includes the coronavirus period, the production of plastic products decreased by 10 percent in March compared to the same period of the previous year and decreased to 2.7 billion dollars. In the report, it is said that “In the plastic product sector, by 2020, 1.8 billion dollars of foreign trade surplus will be given, 15 percent of the production will be exported and 9 percent of the domestic consumption will be covered by imports.” In the report, which also included requests from the government during the coronavirus period, the following headings were listed: “Another problem of the sector is that, despite the fact that only 13 percent of the raw material need is met with domestic production, it is deprived of importing raw materials from more economical prices for the purpose of protecting domestic production. This situation reduces the competitive export opportunities of the sector in global markets in order to protect the domestic raw material producer. The domestic producer should be protected by applying incentives to reduce production and investment costs, instead of imposing taxes on raw material imports. If the production of plastic raw materials does not meet the need, barriers to imports should be removed. Plastics industry should be included in strategic investments regardless of foreign trade data and the minimum investment amount should be determined as 5 million dollars. ”
